Taking a xenophobic page from today’s Republican Party, The North Carolina Democratic Party has paid for flyers which tout “Bringing the Arizona immigration crack down to North Carolina” on behalf of the NC Senate race of David Redwine of Shallotte. In mentioning Arizona and immigration crack down in the same breath, the NC Democratic Party has entered the sewer of race baiting politics which has been the domain of the Republican Party since the days of Nixon’s southern strategy. The southern strategy was designed to take advantage of white disenchantment in the south with the Democratic Party following passage of the Civil Rights Act under Johnson. By invoking Arizona’s controversial and partly unconstitutional SB 1070 (due to the supremacy clause of the Constitution) through this wording, the party is likely facing a backlash to come from many of its donors from urban and university areas of the state.

The Racist Underpinnings of Arizona’s SB 1070

The person that introduced Arizona’s SB 1070 was Republican state senator Russell Pearce. Mr. Pearce is famous in Arizona for an email sent to supporters that had a white nationalist bent. It accused the media of pushing a view of “a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders”. He was also caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. The person taking credit for writing the law is Republican Kris Kobach who is running for Kansas Secretary of State and is a birther. He is also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That is the legal arm of the immigration group FAIR (Federation For American Immigration Reform) which the Southern Poverty Law Center has noted for it’s racist attitudes along with its founder John Tanton. In a Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report on Tanton and FAIR called, “Where Anti-Immigrant Zealots Like Lou Dobbs Get Their ‘Facts’ ” FAIR (founded by John Tanton in 1979) has been marked by

anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi Associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups.

It goes on to mention that it has recently pushed racist conspiracy theories concerning Mexican take over designs on states in the southwest and mentions that current FAIR President Dan Stein had sought some advice from a racist political party in Belgium. Also mentioned is some internal documents named WITAN which were leaked to the press where Tanton warned of a “Latin onslaught” and their birth rates would force “the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile.” He also was demeaning by saying they would “bring with them the tradition of the mordida (bribe), the lack of involvement in public affairs” and questioned their “educability”.

The Intricate Web Of Hatred, Money, And Political Power

In another report by the Southern Poverty Law Center titled, “The Puppeteer” which concerns Tanton and the intricate web of organizational funding of anti-immigrant groups, one can trace the money from right wing billionaires to organizations linked to Tanton, to the Republican Party and the seats of government power. It mentions that

the vast majority of American anti-immigration groups — more than a dozen in all — were either formed, led, or in other ways made possible through Tanton’s efforts.

It goes on to cite that a major funding arm

U.S. Inc., is a Tanton creation, and millions of dollars in financing comes from just a few of his allies, far-right foundations like those controlled by the family of Richard Mellon Scaife. …

Also it mentions that many of these politically connected activists are moving increasingly into groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens which has around 15,000 members whose website recently described African Americans as

“a retrograde species of humanity.” …

But what is most disturbing for anyone that has studied the rise of fascism in Europe in the 20’s and 30’s as well as the US in the 20’s is the increasing connection to government these groups have. Many of the Constitutional protections put into the Constitution as a protection from tyranny have been removed since September 11th, 2001 and have not been restored even with the election of Obama and Democratic Party majorities. We still have prisons outside the rule of law where people are taken without charge or trial and are tortured or worse, extraordinary rendition, wiretapping without warrants, targeted killings, and “prolonged detention”. Following the post-9/11 sweeps of Arab American communities which resulted in indefinite detention of more than a thousand or two persons, many of these groups called for wider dragnets of Hispanic American communities. And in the wake of the plane attacks, there was rapid growth of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus led by right wing extremist (now former) Rep. Tom Tancredo (R), of Colorado. FAIR is considered legitimate to many members of the caucus.

About The Aforementioned Racist Eugenics Foundation

The eugenics foundation that gave $1.2 million dollars to FAIR is called The Pioneer Fund. It has links to sterilization efforts based on race and disability in America’s past as well as the eugenics effort in Nazi Germany. This background can be examined in the piece by Barry Mehler of the Southern Poverty Law Center titled “Race and ‘Reason’ Academic ideas a pillar of racist thought“. The founder of the Pioneer Fund was one Wickliffe P. Draper. In 1935, he traveled to Nazi Germany with an associate, Dr. Clarence Campbell, to attend the International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems. In 1937, he founded the Pioneer Fund which was to fund race scientists and scholarships. It was headed by eugenicist Harry L. Laughlin, an advocate for restrictive immigration laws and compulsary sterilization of the mentally ill and mentally retarded. In 1938, he paid for and disseminated a book titled, “White America” written by white supremacist Earnest Servier Cox and sent a copy to Wilhelm Frick, the German Minister of the Interior. In later years, the fund has been intertwined in American politics and movements (beyond FAIR). As noted in the Southern Poverty Law Center report, Pioneer leaders such as Harry Weyher and Thomas F. Ellis have been part of an interlocking association of groups linked to the late former Senator Jesse Helms (R) NC. In fact, Ellis served as chairman of both the National Congressional Club and the Coalition For Freedom and he was a co-founder of Fairness In Media. So does the NC Democratic Party want to be associated with the legacy of Republican Jesse Helms?

A Great Tool For Further Republican Voter Suppression Of Minority Voters

Investigative reporter Greg Palast recently pursued a political angle to Arizona’a SB 1070 in a report titled, “Behind the Arizona Immigration Law: GOP Game to Swipe the November Election” where he gives his experiences in investigating suppression of Hispanic voters in Arizona. He wrote in the report that following the 2004 elections under Secretary of State Jan Brewer (now governor), at least 100,000 voters were blocked from registering to vote and that in 2005, the first year of the “Great Brown Out” one in three voters in Phoenix had their registrations rejected. Since a non-citizen attempting to register to vote is a crime punishable by jail time and turning over to immigration authorities, Palast sought out these 100,000 people but found none were sent to jail or handed over to authorities. It would appear that 100,000 Hispanic citizens were being denied the right to vote. This is similar to what happened in Florida in 2000 when Afican American voters were purged before the vote count was stopped and a Republican Supreme Court appointed G.W. Bush president.

No Self Respecting NC Democrat would want to be associated with such a flyer or the legacy of Jesse Helms. An attempt to contact Andrew Whalen, Executive Director of the North Carolina Democratic Party for a response before writing this failed. The flyer can be viewed at the right wing think tank charged with resegregating Wake County Public Schools into “community school zones” following the “tea party” takeover of that school board, The Civitas Institute’s website.

But no matter what side one may view the debate, many of Americans do not really know the beliefs and dark ties to history those that have brought the law forward have. They also, might not be familiar with the true motivations of the political class either. Let’s start by taking a look at a piece done by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show and what was discussed.

Looking at the April 26th 2010 show and it transcripts, we gather the following insight

Before this bill was actually signed into law, we told you about the guy who introduced it in the first place. It’s this guy, Republican state senator Russell Pearce. Mr. Pearce is famous in Arizona for having sent an email to his supporters that included a white nationalist screed – accusing the media of pushing the view of ‘a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood non-White aliens pouring across our borders…’ Mr. Pearce sent that around to all his supporters, a move he latter apologized for. Russell Pearce is also famous for having been caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. …

But if you want to meet the guy who’s taking credit for writing the new law. That would be a gentleman named Kris Kobach. Kris Kobach is a birther. He’s running for secretary of state in Kansas right now. His campaign website today brags ‘Kobach Wins One in Arizona.’

The guy who helped write Arizona’s new ‘immigration’ bill is also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That’s the legal arm of an immigration group that’s called FAIR – the ‘Federation For American Immigration Reform.’ FAIR was founded in 1979 by a man named John Tanton. Mr. Tanton is still listed as a member of FAIR’s board of directors.

That’s FAIR, who helped write Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law. After John Tanton got FAIR off the ground, for nine of the first years of the group’s existence, the group reportedly received more than a million dollars in funding from something called The Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund describes itself as a group formed ‘in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.’

Let’s take a look at some of the work of Heidi Beirich in her SPLC Intelligence Report on John Tanton and FAIR called, “Where Anti-Immigrant Zealots Like Lou Dobbs Get Their ‘Facts’” . Here are some note worthy quotes

At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration. Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico’s secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, FAIR President Dan Stein sought “advice” from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party. …

As long ago as 1988, when a series of internal 1986 documents known as the WITAN memos were leaked to the press, Tanton’s bigoted attitudes have been known. In the memos, written to colleagues on the staff of FAIR, Tanton warned of a coming “Latin onslaught” and worried that high Latino birth rates would lead “the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile.” Tanton repeatedly demeaned Latinos in the memos, asking whether they would “bring with them the tradition of the mordida [bribe], the lack of involvement in public affairs” and also questioning Latinos’ “educability.” …

In 1994, Tanton’s Social Contract Press republished an openly racist French book, The Camp of the Saints, with Tanton writing that he was “honored” to republish the race war novel. What Tanton called a “prescient” book describes the takeover of France by “swarthy hordes” of Indians, “grotesque little beggars from the streets of Calcutta,” who arrive in a desperate refugee flotilla. It attacks white liberals who, rather than turn the Indians away, “empty out all our hospital beds so that cholera-ridden and leprous wretches could sprawl between white sheets … and cram our nurseries full of monster children.” It explains how, after the Indians take over France, white women are sent to a “whorehouse for Hindus.” In an afterword special to Tanton’s edition of the novel, author Jean Raspail wrote about his fears that “the proliferation of other races dooms our race, my race, to extinction.”

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked parts of the Arizona Law until the courts decide their fate as they violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution whereby the jurisdiction of immigration lies with the federal government, not with the states and she felt the need to separate them out. In a report by the AP titled, “Judge Blocks Parts of Arizona Immigration Law“, it says

The law will still take effect Thursday, but without many of the provisions that angered opponents — including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws. The judge also put on hold a part of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.

This was done both as a matter of law reserved for the federal government and protection for those who are either legal residents or American citizens of Hispanic or Mexican descent as stated in this from Common Dreams,

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law). By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

Indeed, even the whitest of America’s bigots themselves could not prove they are citizens or legal residents without carrying their birth certificates or some other type of documents. The 36 page court decision can be read here.

Will the adjustments to Arizona’s immigration law prevent the Republican Party practice of minority voter suppression?

As pointed out in a previous report on American Commentary Blog about the Arizona Republican Party’s history of intimidation, harrassment, and voter suppression of latino citizens and Greg Palast’s investigative journalism, the timing of pushing this law quickly through could arm them with another weapon or excuse in this practice for the upcoming elections. Arizona’s 21st century version of Bull Connor, Sheriff Arpaio, was quoted in an AP report titled, “Arizona sheriff not relenting after court ruling” as saying,

“It’s my job,” said Arpaio, standing beside a sheriff’s truck that has a number for an immigration hot line written on its side. “I have two state (immigration) laws that I am enforcing. It’s not federal, it’s state.”

Seems there is more confrontation coming from America’s new red state confederate movement. Indeed, in a report by CBS News, the U.S. Marshall’s office is reporting threats have been made against Judge Bolton. That’s par for the course in any eliminationist movement (intimidation of officials).

In this age of near total corruption of the legislative process in the United States by multi-national corporations and the military industrial complex which has led us to the brink of financial collapse and endless war, the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC effectively designed to shut off voter remedy has borne its first fruit. A new Political Action Committee named Minnesota Forward funded by the Target Corporation, Polaris, Hubbard Broadcasting, and others has thrown its money behind the “Tea Party” like GOP candidate in Minnesota’s governor’s race, Tom Emmer. Mr. Emmer has called for lower than minimum wage wages for restaurant servers or wait staff and has praised Arizona’s unconstitutional Immigration law that was written or crafted by racist political elements.

At the Wecome to O So Minnesota blog website, George Campbell has suggested a letter writing campaign to Target Corporation CEO Gregg W. Steinhafel. How this will effect the public image of these corporations and/or bottom line, time will tell. Join in if you like.